Why I’m a Lee Valley Loyalist

I’m old fashioned.  I admit it.  And what my old-fashioned self has seen over the decades that I’ve been on the planet has been a change from stores that worked hard to provide customer service and a customer-friendly ambiance to stores who only look at how much cheaper it is to hire a kid who knows nothing of the products rather than someone knowledgable about the products being sold.  Somewhere along the line stores stopped worrying about satisfied customers.  I guess they figured they’d “make it up in volume,” as the saying goes.  And, of course, they all blame it on something other than themselves.  It’s the Internet.  It’s consumer price sensitivity.  It’s never “We’ve simply lost sight of the value of repeat business.”

There is irony in the fact that in our modern online shopping world, we’re hearing that consumer friendliness is making a come back.  The pundits tell us that online buying is very sensitive to how potential customers feel about the people and stores where they shop.  Odd, isn’t it, that it takes shopping through wires to cause that to be acknowledged.  Truth is, this has always been true and probably always will be.

Some companies take advantage of this fact.  I guess I first walked into a Lee Valley store sometime in the early 90s, back when Lee Valley’s Ottawa store was a smallish affair and their catalog was much smaller than it is today.  Even back then, though, Lee Valley’s emphasis was on quality and customer service.  Rob Lee seems endowed with “the customer is everything” gene that so many of his competitors lack.  Anyways, Lee Valley is now one of the largest sellers of woodworking supplies and high quality tools in the world.  Justifiably so.  And it’s important to note that they haven’t done it by making their products cheaper as many have done.  In point of fact, they done it by continually making their tools better, smiling, and saying “Yes, how may we help you today?”

And that’s why I’m a Lee Valley loyalist.  I have dealt with no finer company on the planet and here’s one example of the sort of thing that keeps me loyal to this company, quite beyond the quality of their products.

The Case of the Missing Contents

On May 10th I reached into my mailbox and withdrew a standard size envelope from Lee Valley.  I love getting mail from Lee Valley so excitement ensued.  Until I opened the envelope.  It was empty.  Odd, I thought.  Maybe it was a package of rabbets or dados that I’d ordered and forgot about.  Some pilot holes, perhaps?

Anyways, I went to the Lee Valley website, clicked on customer service, and asked them what they were sending me.  Heavens, you never want to use a rabbet when you need a pilot hole.  Better safe than sorry.   THIRTEEN MINUTES LATER I received a response from customer service.  They apologized for inconveniencing me (yeah…the guys at Bell Canada never said that when they’ve kept me on the phone for an hour over a problem) and explained that the attached PDF was what the envelope should have contained.  It was sent to me because I owned a Lee Valley router plane.

The PDF was about an upgrade part for the router plane.  They had taken advice from users of the product and changed the depth adjustment mechanism and they wanted to let me know that I could do this upgrade on my own router plane the next time I ordered by adding part number 05P38.11 to that order.  The document went on to explain that it would be sent for FREE.

And, as if I don’t have a Lee Valley wish list as long as your arm, they gave me reason to order something so I could get my FREE upgrade.  They’d also listened to we loyalists whine that we wanted some narrow blades for our router planes.  As a result, they were adding three new blades to the catalog – 1/8″, 3/32′, and 3/16″ and since I was such a great guy for accepting their FREE upgrade I could also buy these three new blades at a discounted price if I did it by June 6th.  I did it, just as quickly as I could punch the keys.

It is now TWO DAYS since I received my empty envelope.  This morning I received a very full one, only this one was padded.  The FREE upgrade is fantastic, though I never quibbled over how the old depth stop operated.  The blades a very welcome addition to my toolbox as I often need to work narrow rabbets and dados.

Thank you, Lee Valley, just for being you.

Cheers — Larry

larry@woodnbits.com